Peanut butter is widely enjoyed and finds a variety of uses. The most common use of peanut butter is in preparing sandwiches. Other uses include dipping and eating the peanut butter directly from a container with a spoon or with edible carriers such as crackers or vegetable pieces. To a lesser degree, peanut butter is used in a variety of baking and cooking applications. Product characteristics which are responsible for peanut butter's wide acceptance and popularity are its flavor, its good nutritional properties and its suitability for consumption alone or in combination with a variety of other foods.
Since the most common uses of peanut butter call for spreading and dipping, it is paramount that the product be of a soft consistency and be easily spreadable to avoid tearing bread or crumbling crackers. Additionally, since children are the largest group of peanut butter users, a soft and spreadable product will help to facilitate the application of peanut butter to bread, crackers and the like by this group without the need for assistance from parents.
As much as peanut butter is liked and appreciated, it does have the annoying property of being quite cohesive and, as a consequence, has a tendency to stick and cling to mouth-part during eating. For this reason, peanut butter has sometimes been identified or classified as a "choke" food. This inherent characteristic of adhesiveness often bars the use of peanut butter by the very young and the very old.
The two important product characteristics of improved spreadability and softness along with reduced adhesiveness, have been addressed in peanut butter for many years as evidenced by the large volume of technical literature and patents covering this subject. Despite such efforts, only modest, incremental improvements have been realized to date in the area of improved spreadability and reduced stickiness in peanut butter.
It is known to aerate peanut butter to affect its properties. However, it is also known that incorporation of gas will proportionately and significantly lighten the color and reduce or dilute the flavor impact of the peanut butter.
Prior disclosures of whipped or aerated peanut butter-type products do not appear to have addressed adjustment to either color or flavor loss caused by the incorporation of inert gases, which renders such a product atypical and inferior to standardized, widely accepted and popular peanut butter.
Previously proposed formulations and methods for producing a whipped peanut butter, either of the creamy or crunchy variety or style, have not been entirely satisfactory. For one, the prior formulations have often called for use of gelatin or other thickening agents along with significantly higher levels of hydrogenated and/or partially hydrogenated high melting vegetable oils than those found in conventional peanut butters, to help stabilize the aerated product matrix. The choice of such stabilizers and/or their usage level excluded such products from FDA Standards for real peanut butter, placing them into either a peanut spread, artificial peanut butter or other descriptive and fanciful name category.
Conventional peanut butters utilize from 1.0 to 1.4 percent of a high melting (145.degree.-155.degree. F.) vegetable oil stabilizer primarily to reduce liquid oil separation. Somewhat higher levels of a lower melting point hardened vegetable oil stabilizer may also be used. Prior art disclosures of aerated peanut butters have utilized higher levels of high melting vegetable oil stabilizer above and beyond that required to prevent oil separation. These disclosures reveal such usage levels of 2 to 10% of a partially hydrogenated vegetable oil stabilizer to not only control oil separation but to stabilize the aerated product matrix.
It is quite apparent to those having even limited familiarity with peanut butter that use of a 2 to 10 percent level of high melting vegetable oil stabilizers, disclosed previously, will negatively affect the melt-down characteristic of a whipped product making it waxy and gummy along with reducing its spreadability. Such technical approaches, in essence, negate the very benefits of improved mouth-feel and spreadability sought through the use of aeration of conventional peanut butter or like products.
It has also been discovered that textural defects such as product pull-away from the container and/or product (i.e., peanut butter) cracking are encountered when whipped peanut butters are placed in certain containers such as those made of standard glass, polyethylene terephthalate or thin walled high density polyethylene (H.D.P.E.) having a wall thickness of 0.020 inches or less.